Joe Katzman, the man who inspired my Hulk blog, has tackled
the subject himself, using an international flavor. The result is
hilarious. Check out Winds of Change for a good laugh.

Victor Davis Hero

Another superb
column from a man who should be advising the President:

We are seeing also a funny type of war. We know that the Taliban hid
in mosques and hospitals. The terrorists in Palestine commandeer ambulances,
booby-trap apartment buildings, and storm churches. And it is reported
that Saddam has hidden his biological arsenal among private residences
and in places of worship. There is a trend here aimed at incurring the
requisite collateral damage at a time of war  tactics even more
baffling when they are juxtaposed with loud bravado about doing this
and that on the field of battle.

So inflated rhetoric at last becomes repugnant. We were told "ten
thousand" were butchered in Jenin  an incursion variously
called a "massacre" or even "genocide" and "a
holocaust." When the body count did not reach "thousands"
and the conditions of the street fighting never approximated a "genocide,"
there was nonetheless never a retraction of the Big Lie, never an apology
for deliberate misstatements, never forthcoming supporting documentation
to support such incendiary allegations. This misinformation campaign
is now quite tiresome. We have gone from millions of starving children
in Iraq, to the even more millions lost to famine in Afghanistan, to
tens of thousands of innocents bombed by our own planes, to thousands
in the last weeks butchered by Israelis with "Apaches and F-16s."
When no evidence supports any of these wild numbers, the modus operandi
is not to retract the initial untruths but to produce yet more lies.
permalink

Freudian slip

I watched Nightline's "Town Meeting" in Israel tonight. One
of the Palestinian representatives said that there would be peace when
Israel drew back to "June 1947 borders". Not 1967. 1947.

Freudian slip?

Uh-huh.

I watched exactly the types of suits Hanson discusses in the above article.
permalink

Final (I hope) bee report

The scene: Late afternoon, my kitchen. I approach the door and open it
slowly, looking at the side of the door up, then down. No bee. I look
to the left, where there is a slot for the doorknob latch. Uh, no, there
are two, and one contains a humongous black-and-yellow striped, big, fat
bumblebee. Which may very well have been a carpenter bee, which would
be what it was doing inside the slot of my doorframe--looking for a new
nesting space.

Meryl: EWWW! Close the door! [door closes]Brenda: Aw, poor thing. Don't let it die. [door opens]Meryl: I'm not touching it. You want to rescue it, you do
it.James: I'm not touching it.Brenda: Wait, let me go get something to get it out of there. [Exits]
[wind blows]Meryl: It's gone. I think the wind blew it out of there. [looks
on balcony] There it is!James: Let me see! Wow, it is still alive. It's moving. That is
one strong bee. I can't believe it's still alive after a whole day!Meryl: Get it off my balcony, please.James: I'm not touching it!Meryl: Here, use this! [hands piece of junk mail to James] [James
attempts to sweep bee off balcony]

Speaking of Reason's parody
of The Corner, sorry, Professor--it is funny. Especially the Dingleberry
posts.

NO ESCAPE FROM IT [John Dingleberry] I've enjoyed Alpha-Bits ever since
I arrived in this great country. But recently, I find that no sooner
have I poured the milk than my favorite breakfast treats begin forming
messages in support of homosexuality.

Some of the boys of blogdom are linking to an Australian article on how
our sailors wore out the whores of Perth. I won't be linking to the article.
Neither am I surprised that 5,500 sailors managed to wear out the sex
workers of the city. I'm going to guess that the number of hookers in
Perth is in the three-digit range, tops. Duh. Stupid story. Frat-boy reaction
by bloggers.

Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat told CNN that 500 Palestinians
had been killed in the fighting, although he later told The Associated
Press he could not document the figure.

Human Rights Watch said its experts had found nothing to back such
allegations.

"Human Rights Watch did not find evidence to support claims that
the (Israeli military) massacred hundreds of Palestinians in the camp,"
the report said.

Fakhri Turkman, a Palestinian Legislative Council member and the head
of an emergency committee set up to help camp residents, criticised
Human Rights Watch and other groups who did not use the term "massacre"
to describe the Israeli operation.

"Sometimes we call it a massacre when you kill one innocent person,"
he said.

Gee, what a surprise to hear a Palestinian official say that.
Hm. Maybe I should start a Quote of the Day section. There's my first
one. Look above. Readers are encouraged to send in quotes, as I've just
made a whole lotta work for myself by instigating this. Make them short,
please.
permalink

Hulk answer email

Reader Kevin G. came up with a good question: How would the
Incredible Hulk have solved the Florida fiasco during the 2000 presidential
elections? The question has to be fleshed out somewhat, of course.

The problem: The Presidential election
hinges on the outcome of the vote in Florida. Palm Beach County suffers
from the results of the "butterfly ballot", which Democrats
claim was so difficult to follow that Pat Buchanan stole thousands of
Gore votes. Vice President Gore demands a recount, but only of certain
precincts. Governor Bush wants no recount at all. The highest courts in
the land wind up involved, lawyers argue before the Supreme Court, and
a parade of police cars escort the votes that will be recounted to a secure
area.

Actually, if Hulk knew only a little more about politics, I'm betting
that he'd really say something like, "Hulk smash people who forget
that Al Gore not carry own state in election! If Gore carry Tennessee,
Florida not matter!"

As far as I can tell, it is dead, and I have come to the conclusion
that it probably was a driller bee, and that it somehow already
drilled into the balcony door. Which would explain why the buzzing was
dim at first, and then got louder when I closed the door--it couldn't
get out.

That being said--I'm not opening that door today. Nuh-uh. I am going
to make absolutely sure it's dead, and then I'll open it. With a large
amount of trepidation.

Why couldn't it be a spider? Spiders don't bother me in the least. I
have a friend who freaks out over them, but she hates them so much that
she gets a frightening expression of purpose on her face, grabs something
to smash the spider with--no matter how big it is--and smashes it. It's
impressive, actually. Hey! I'll get her over here to open the door.
permalink

Bruce Hill begs
for hits. Please go there, he's starting to look pitiful, and I can't
marry a man who begs. Even if Buffy is his favorite show, and he's a Harlan
Ellison fan.

The buzzing noise and the moving-around noise have stopped. This means
either the insect is dead, or it is lying low, planning a counter-attack
once I open the door. I'm thinking that balcony door isn't getting opened
until the day I have to move out of here. I don't have to use the
hibachi.

My brother is of the opinion that it's a driller bee, those humongous
bumblebees that eat into the wood of your house to live and then cruise
for gnats for sustenance. We have them around here, and it's the tail
end of their spring season, and the buzzing noise was definitely loud
enough for it to be one of those suckers. But I'm still not opening
that door, not without a beekeeping suit. I'm picturing a very angry bee
just waiting for me to free him. Nuh-uh!

Judging from the amount of hits and email I got over the Hulk
smash! blog, there are a heckuva lot of comics fans who read Glenn
Reynolds and Charles
Johnson. Well, I know what some of you fanboys are thinking. Hey,
I've been a comics fan since I was, oh, eight or so, and only stopped
a few years ago because, well, comics really sucked too much and cost
too much at that time. I've heard they've gotten better, but--anyway.
Yeah, fanboys, I know what you're thinking. And the answer to your question
is: The Hulk could always kick the Thing's ass.

Oh, that wasn't the question? Never mind. (Yeah, like I'm gonna answer
that question.) permalink

Ew! Ew! Ew!

My balcony door was open, and I heard a low buzzing sound, as of someone
cutting bushes in the distance. It was constant, and it started to annoy
me, so I closed the door. And the buzzing sound immediately got louder
and more frantic, which made me realize that I shut the door on some kind
of buzzing insect--a BIG one--and that it was probably really mad right
now. So I stepped back out of the kitchen, prepared to run from a really
pissed-off bee or wasp or whatever, and the buzzing noise reached a crescendo
and then stopped. Phew, I thought. Maybe it got away. Or it's dead.

Only I just heard a low buzzing noise a minute or two ago, and Tig is
meowing at the door begging me to open it, with his hunter look on, and,
well--I'm going to go take a shower and hope that whatever it is can't
get into my apartment. Then I don't intend to open the balcony door until
tomorrow, by which time the buzzing thing should be dead.

I hate buzzing bugs. I should get one of my brothers to come over and
open the door for me. Omigod, I can hear it moving... permalink

Keeping up appearances

Asparagirl
and Zen Flea (here's
her main page) both brought up the
subject of "looking" Jewish. It's an interesting and deadly
serious topic today; like Zen Flea, I don't "look" Jewish, however,
I always wear a Star of David. I feel naked without one. And I can never
seem to keep my mouth shut, or my expression from turning to a glare,
at anti-Semitic remarks.

I find myself watching people now, judging their reaction to me, for
as the days get warmer, the Star grows more evident. And the weather seems
extremely chancy for Jews these days--particularly those of us in states
with large Muslim populations. permalink

TIME marches back

Tal G points to this
article on how TIME Magazine altered a photo caption to paint an Israeli
demonstration in a bad light. It reminded me of why I let my subscription
lapse a number of years ago. My grandfather was always telling me that
Time had an anti-Semitic bias, and I disagreed vehemently. Until Menachem
Begin was elected Prime Minister of Israel. The TIME piece was a hatchet
job, but the line that made me believe my grandfather was right was in
the first paragraph of the article. It introduced Begin in this way: "Menachem
Begin (rhymes with Fagin)..."

Ronald Reagan was coming to national political prominence at the time.
I'm a little foggy on what they wrote to help us pronounce his name, but
I'm certain it wasn't "Fagin."

TIME could have written, say, "Menachem Begin (pronounced bay-gin)".
Instead, they chose Fagin--the extremely negative, anti-Semitic portrayal
of a Jewish thief from Dickens' Oliver Twist--to help people learn
how to pronounce Begin's name. Interesting, when you consider that the
film Oliver! had been released nearly ten years prior to Begin's election,
and the Broadway production, of course, came before the film, and had
been dead for years. And I may be wrong--there is that possibility--but
I don't think Oliver Twist was on the bestseller lists at the time.

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that from time to time,
I've been taking the Hulk perspective on various problems, specifically
the Middle East. Well, when you take a hard look at things, I've realized
that there is no problem so complex that you can't apply the Hulk perspective
to it. Let's give it a try:

The problem:The standoff
at the Church of the Nativity. Palestinians refuse to come out
unless allowed to go to Gaza or stay in the West Bank, no Israeli arrests
allowed. Israelis want to arrest or exile to a foreign country known terrorist
leaders; the rest may go free.

The solution: Hulk smash Church wall!
Hulk smash puny humans with guns! Hulk not smash puny humans without guns!
Hulk take puny humans out of Church! (Editor's Note: If the IDF
doesn't pull back while this happens, Hulk will smash them as well. He
never was much good at differentiating between groups of men with guns.)

The problem: Anti-Semitism is rampant
throughout France. Synagogues have been burned down, Jewish children attacked,
bombs placed in cemeteries. Jean-Marie Le Pen is now a viable candidate
for the presidency of France, and French Jews fear for their safety.

The problem: The United Nations would
like to send a "fact-finding mission" to Jenin to determine
whether or not "massacres" occurred. The Israelis refuse to
allow a committee of people already known to be hostile to Israel into
Jenin, and also refuse to allow the committee to interview their soldiers.
Kofi Annan wants to disband the committee rather than make any changes
suggested by the Israeli Cabinet.

The problem: The world media is extremely
biased against Israel, choosing to yammer about massacres without evidence
while subsequently ignoring the evidence that there was no massacre. People
like Robert Fisk make up facts on a regular basis, while Oxford poets
discuss their desires to see "Brooklyn-born Jews" shot. American
newspapers ignore major pro-Israel rallies and put on the front page pro-Palestinian
rallies, even if only sparsely attended.

The problem: Pedophilia is rampant
throughout the American Catholic Church. It has seemingly reached epidemic
proportions, finally forcing the Church to admit there is a problem and
take action to remove the priests responsible. (Editor's note:
Okay, it's not the Middle East, but it's hot right now. Shut up.)

The solution: Hulk smash puny men
in funny clothes! Hulk smash!

The problem: Yassir Arafat refuses
to keep his word, won't clamp down on terrorist activity, indeed, has
been traced to payments to suicide bombers, the importation of 50 tons
of weapons on the Karinne A, including C-4 to build more terror bombs,
and has not even tried to negotiate in good faith to end the conflict
in Israel.

The problem: Saudi Arabia fears for
its image. Fifteen of the nineteen suicide bombers came from Saudi Arabia,
Osama bin Laden is a Saudi Arabian, Saudia Arabia is the largest financier
of militant Islam in the world. They've hired an American ad agency to
improve their image in the United States.

The solution: Hulk smash Saudi Arabia!
Hulk smash bad men!

And there you have it. The Stan Lee Solution, starring The
Incredible Hulk. If you think my theory doesn't work, then
email me the most complicated problems you
can think of, and I will attempt to find the Hulk's answer to any problem
that comes my way. permalink

Don't tell me there aren't
any good liberals

This is why I love Aaron Sorkin. Sometimes, when he crosses fact with
fiction it stinks. Other times, you get this:

Last night's West Wing: C.J. Cregg is asked for her opinion on the Saudi
religious police who forced teenaged girls back into a burning school
because they weren't dressed correctly to come out in public, causing
the loss of 17 lives:

Outraged? I'm barely surprised. This is a country where women aren't
allowed to drive a car. They're not allowed to be in the company of
any man other than a close relative. They're required to adhere to a
dress code that would make a Maryknoll nun look like Malibu Barbie.
They beheaded 121 people last year for robbery, rape, and drug trafficking.
They have no free press, no elected government, no political parties,
and the royal family allows the religious police to travel in groups
of six, carrying nightsticks, and they freely and publicly beat women.
But Brutus is an honorable man.

Seventeen schoolgirls were forced to burn alive because they weren't
wearing the proper clothing. Am I outraged? No, Steve, no Chris, no
Mark. That is Saudi Arabia, our partners in peace.

And the reason Allison Janney won the Emmy is evident in her scathing
delivery. Whoo. Nearly burned out my television set. permalink

Very funny read, via Dr.
Frank: the Norwegian
Blogger does a MST3K take on that insane Egyptian shrink's remarks
about the President's intelligence. See, this is why blogging is more
fun than print journalism. I can't see the Times printing an article
like this one.

The propaganda war continues, meanwhile, in the refugee camp itself.
Families whose homes had been destroyed were ordered to sit and lie
inside tents pitched near the destruction, to be available for interviews
and filming with foreign reporters and photographers. At dusk, with
the press opportunities concluded, they returned to houses offered to
them in the undamaged city or in the rest of the refugee camp.
Other young men, members of various factions, have been on duty in the
camp's narrow streets, eager to conduct foreign correspondents to places
where they say Israelis killed militants after they surrendered or had
been captured.

Yeah, I saw the same kid staring soulfully out of a hole in the wall
of a house on both ABC and NBC news last night. They positioned him strategically
on the rubble in various places. He was extremely photogenic. No, the
news isn't biased. Nuh-uh. That's why you don't read this in the Times:

Others in the city say the resistance to the Israeli incursion had
been carried out by only about 10 percent of the militants who had originally
been in the area. Most had retreated into the hills or into city back
streets as the Israelis entered the area, they said.
Families living in houses directly opposite the destroyed area have
told The Washington Times that Israeli soldiers, who temporarily occupied
their houses just before the final battle began, treated them without
violence and assured them: "You will not be harmed."

The Timesreports
that the Vatican will be sending a Cardinal to help end the siege of the
Church of the Nativity. Hope there aren't any boys inside.

Okay, that was low. But let me say something serious: Why is it that
no one anywhere is asking a question that's been bothering me for weeks?
Why is everyone assuming that only the American Catholic Church is full
of pedophile priests? Since when is pedophilia an American-only sickness?
Look to the rest of the world, John Paul. My guess is pedophilia is rampant.
permalink

While we wait

While I'm waiting on the Left Coast to wake up and give me permission
to post a deeply moving speech by a Rabbi a couple of weeks ago, we can
fall back on an old standby--the search engines!

I am deeply proud to say that John Edward Fraud has won the Search Engine
Most Common Search Competition for the nth month running--he wins consistently.
Coming in second this month was Meredith Viera, of whom some searchers
wanted to know about her feet, and not just you-know-what pics. Miss Cleo,
alas, has fallen from the public eye and moved far down the search phrases
ladder.

A couple of new search engines popped up, one of which is Direct Hit.
Alas, it wasn't--the user wanted "muslims New Jersey". Boy,
s/he must have been really disappointed to find all this Jewish stuff,
huh?

My nods to popular culture still get a fair amount of searches, particularly
things like "Love of Chair" and the Chicken Fat song. Which
reminds me: Reader Bob W. has found
the song online. Now that's dedication, and future searchers will
thank you for it. I'll do that now. Thanks Bob--maybe I'll use it for
my exercise routines again. (This is where the ascii grin would go if
I ever put them in these blogs.)

As of 11:30 this morning, I've gotten quite a few searches. "Dare
I eat a peach"--I so love literary searches. The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock. Like every other budding author, I used that line in
a short story. Ah, the follies of youth. Hey, it was a good story, too.
Someday I might actually put up a few. Someday.

There are a few very funny ones today. "john edward bite me"
had me laughing out loud, as did "identifty xxx xxx xxx xxx-xxx-xx
from waycrosse, georgia and bring out all hidden files everywhere on him
also--from the most current future back to the past". I x'd out the
name and pseudo SSN (it's missing two digits). I suspect the searcher
didn't really think that s/he was going to get results from that, but
it did make me laugh.

I love the search engines. Google has sent me thousands of visitors,
and I'm of the opinion that I've kept a significant portion of them. I
doubt I'm keeping those that look for "pictures of nekkid fireman"
(misspelled deliberately), but I can see from my referrers section that
someone was looking for "view from Eagle Rock reservation",
read that page, and there was a referrer from that page to elsewhere in
yourish.com. Search engines (and Adil
Farooq) are how I've gained most of my Middle East readers. And as
I am only about two-thirds toward my current goal of kicking Wil Wheaton's
ass (in hits and visitors per month), I'll take what I can get.

You folks--my readers--are the reason I'm doing this. I can write in
a vacuum, but it's nowhere near as fun as writing for people who are actually
reading my words. And if it hadn't been for the search engines, Bob would
never have sent me the URL for the Chicken Fat mp3. Like Stephen
Green is fond of saying--that's what makes America so great. (And
slim and trim!) permalink

Reader Doug L. points me to a long, thoughtful article on French anti-Semitism
entitled Liberte,
Egalite, Judeophobie in The
Weekly Standard. It is so good it's difficult to excerpt. I'll just
stop after a few graphs--yes, it's long, but well worth the read.

The outbreak began in September 2000, in the days after Palestinians
launched the "second intifada" against Israel. The first attacks
included firebombings of synagogues in Paris, Villepinte, Creil, Lyons,
Ulis (badly damaged), and Trappes (burned to the ground), and other
Jewish buildings (high schools, kosher restaurants) throughout France;
desecrations of synagogues and cemeteries; widespread stonings of Jews
leaving Sabbath worship, death threats, bomb threats, and Nazi and Islamist
graffiti of every description: swastikas, "Hitler was right,"
"F-- Your Mother, Jews" (Nique ta mere les juifs--a slogan
so commonplace that it now appears more usually as NTM les juifs), "Death
to the Jews," and "In Paris as in Gaza--Intifada!"

Such slogans, particularly the last, now get chanted routinely at pro-Palestinian
rallies in Paris and elsewhere. (As do hymns to Osama bin Laden, according
to reports of last October's pro-Palestinian march in Paris.) Anti-Jewish
violence has indeed tracked the progress of the intifada, rising during
violent periods in the Middle East and falling during truces. There
was also a spike after September 11; on the following Sabbath alone,
worshippers were stoned at synagogues in Clichy, Garges-les-Gonesse,
and Massy; gangs sought to storm a synagogue in Villepinte; and shots
were fired outside a Jewish association in Paris. But if it has slowed
at times, the cascade of such incidents has never stopped, even for
a week, in the last 19 months. At the turn of this year, the League
of French Jewish Students and the watchdog agency SOS Racism compiled
a list of 406 such incidents.

After Israel's attack on terrorist camps in Jenin and elsewhere, the
violence exploded to unheard-of proportions. Over Passover weekend last
month, a bomb was found in a cemetery in Schiltigheim, outside Strasbourg,
and three synagogues were burned. The authorities seemed to be waking
up. While it took 12 days for any national official to even comment
on the October 2000 attacks, this time the Ministry of the Interior
issued a report showing 395 anti-Jewish incidents in the first half
of April alone. Almost two-thirds of these involved graffiti, but the
others were more serious, including 16 physical assaults and 14 more
firebombings. The Wiesenthal Center circulated an advisory urging Jewish
travelers to France to exercise "extreme caution."
...

It was thus alarming to see Bove, after a pro forma denunciation of
anti-Jewish violence, informing viewers of the TV channel Canal Plus
that the attacks on French synagogues were being either arranged or
fabricated by Mossad. "Who profits from the crime?" Bove asked.
"The Israeli government and its secret services have an interest
in creating a certain psychosis, in making believe that there is a climate
of anti-Semitism in France, in order to distract attention from what
they are doing."

Since Bove didn't actually say Jews weren't killed in the Holocaust,
it may seem excessive to some readers that B'nai B'rith accused him
of negationnisme, or Holocaust denial. But B'nai B'rith is right. They
have simply thought about the roots of Holocaust denial a bit more thoroughly
than others. For anyone who inhabits Western culture, the Holocaust
made that culture a much more painful place to inhabit--and for any
reasonably moral person, greatly narrowed the range of acceptable political
behavior. To be human is to wish it had never happened. (Those who deny
that it did may be those who can't bear to admit that it happened.)
But it did. If there's a will-to-anti-Semitism in Western culture--as
there probably is--then the Arab style of Judeophobia, which is an anti-Semitism
without the West's complexes, offers a real redemptive project to those
Westerners who are willing to embrace it. It can liberate guilty, decadent
Europeans from a horrible moral albatross. What an antidepressant! Saying
there was no such thing as the gas chambers is, of course, not respectable.
But the same purpose can be served using what Leo Strauss called the
reductio ad Hitlerum to cast the Jews as having committed crimes identical
to the Nazis'. They must be identical, of course, so the work of self-delusion
can be accomplished. We did one, the Jews did one. Now we're even-steven.

I'm looking for this one at the newsstand as well. This is a phenomenal
essay. Perhaps we should mail it to the French politicians. permalink

We'll be right back after these
important messages

Well, not really, but it's one of those days. I had a choice between
eating breakfast before going to my appointment this morning, or writing
in the weblog.

Meryl is feeling one of those third-person moods coming upon her again
(which is why she used the word "upon" instead of plain old
"on"). Meryl went to the library on her way home today, and
has a double armload of history books, specifically Middle East and Jewish
history, as well as the DVD of Dr. Strangelove (because, after all, she's
an odd one). Watch for many debunkings of myths and lies to come as soon
as she can wade through the material. And possibly quotes from the movie.

NEW BUFFY EPISODE TONIGHT! NEW BUFFY EPISODE!!

Whew. I'm better now.

Marketing doesn't work on me. Nope. Nuh-uh. Just because I watched Third
Watch last night and just because they had another song at the end of
the show which made me remember the song at the end of the show a few
weeks ago, which I heard and immediately said, "Who? WHO sings that
song?!" and swore to track
it down, doesn't mean that I did. At least, not right away.

I waited until last night, when I discovered that Jimmy Eat World wrote
the song on the Third Watch episode I was thinking of, and that I'm now
up to two songs by them, which means if I hear one more Jimmy Eat World
song that I like, I'm buying their new CD.

I am just a worthless liar.Since I first started bringing my Jewishness to the forefront on this
blog, I have received emails from people who just don't get why I think
they're anti-Semitic. They send me the ravings of neo-Nazi David Duke
and don't understand why I can't just see what he's talking about,
just think about it for just a bit; I'll see the logic in it. Lyndon
LaRouche is not an anti-Semite, he's telling the truth, if I would just
read and understand, I will agree. Look, here's proof of the international
Jewish conspiracy; how can I not give up and admit that my fellow Jews
are evil? Well, not all of them, just the ones in the conspiracy; the
obvious subtext being that if I will only confess to the conspiracy, I
will become one of the "good" Jews and my salvation is sure.
Why I am supposed to believe them and not my own experience and research
is never satisfactorily explained; I can only surmise that it is because
I am blinded by my heritage.

I am just an imbecile.What all these arguments have in common, however, is their need for
validation from me--a Jew. It is somewhere between comical and pitiful;
it is the verbal equivalent of theater's two-sided mask of comedy and
tragedy. But laced within the pleas are the traps: The straw man that
is to be burned the moment I accept the bait. Here are the samples, in
my own words: If The Jews Didn't Run The World There Would Be No War In
The Middle East (or Anywhere Else), Contrast and Compare. The Jews Are
Overusing Holocaust Imagery Especially In The Current Situation, True
or False. Israel Must Be A Light Unto The Nations; You Said So And We're
Holding You To It, Explain. (Corollary: Jews Must Be The Most Moral People
On Earth But Muslims (Oppressed or Not) Don't Have To Follow Rules Of
Civilized Behavior At All, Summarize.) And the last, most vicious of all
the anti-Semitic lies thrown my way to date: The Jews Are Bringing This
All On Themselves, In 1500 Words or Less, sans the usual flamboyant
Yourish dash and verve. (That last is verbatim from a recent email.)

I will only complicate you.The global conspiracy of Jews we will just laugh about and move on.

Trust in me and fall as well.The complaint of overuse of Holocaust terms is a much larger issue
than it appears. Translated, it means: "Look, we already gave you
a country, Germany paid reparations, there are Holocaust museums everywhere,
can we just shut up and move on now? Goddam whiny Jews, always complaining
the world is out to get them. Shut up already, willya? Take it in silence,
like you did in the good old days."

I will find a center in you.And yet--the ones who cry the loudest about Jews overusing the Holocaust
imagery have no trouble at all expropriating words like "pogrom,"
which are traditionally used to describe attacks--often massacres--against
Jews, generally with the complicity of the local government. The expropriation
is insidious. It's quiet. It's stealth anti-Semitism. It is the death
of a thousand cuts as, drop by drop, the blood is leeched from the victim.
Expropriate enough of the terminology, and the world will only yawn the
next time Jews are murdered in great numbers, as they will have been transformed
from victim to monster. It has happened already, in Israel, as bomb and
bullet tore to pieces hundreds of Jews sitting in cafes, celebrating Bat
Mitzvahs, riding trains and buses, having Passover dinner. These
deaths are regrettable, the world proclaims, but Israel must "show
restraint" and not fight back. And when she does strike out in self-defense,
the world rises en masse and proclaims that the Palestinians are suffering
Israeli "pogroms". The Star of David "evolves" into
a swastika in pro-Palestinian posters at "peace" rallies in
the Washington Mall. The Arab press draws swastikas on every Jewish political
figure, almost on a daily basis. And the language of the Holocaust, bit
by bit, is stolen from the victims.

I will chew it up and leave.The most vile aspect of the complainers is their attempt to minimize
the Holocaust--because that is what they are doing by insisting Jews talk
about it too much. And why should Jews talk about it, hm? It's not like
I grew up on the block next to the Fried sisters, three women with numbers
tattooed on their arms that you could see only in the warm weather, as
they sat out on their front porches in their short-sleeved housedresses
in the evenings. You could look, but not mention, because they were so
traumatized by their experience in the concentration camps that they never
spoke to anyone--not even their children--about it. Nor should we talk
about Grandma Shirley
escaping from the horrors of Poland in the 1930s. We absolutely should
not mention that some who died in the Netanya Massacre were survivors
of the death camps--because we talk too much about the Holocaust. It's
not like there are living Holocaust survivors, and children of Holocaust
survivors in our families, after all. Why should we mention a part of
recent history? It's like thosed damned WWII vets--why can't they just
shut up about the war, it ended more than fifty years ago, we're pals
with Germany and Japan now, and the French--okay, well they still hate
us and they're still persecuting Jews, but hey, they're French. They eat
Ortolans. But we're tired of hearing how great that generation was; it
makes us feel inferior, so stop making movies like Saving Private Ryan,
willya? Spielberg? Yeah, he's part of that goddam Jewish Hollywood conspiracy,
anyway. He's in on it. Oh, and that Holocaust thing--how long do we have
to feel guilty about it, anyway? Shut up. Shut up. SHUT UP!

I will work to elevate youAnd Israel will be "a light unto the nations" (Isaiah 42:6
). There is a widespread belief in the world that Israel must be the most
moral of nations. The belief isn't even an unspoken one; over and over
again columnists and pundits and ordinary citizens go on and on about
how Israel must be better than the Arab dictatorships that strive for
her elimination; she must not resort to the brutal tactics of her enemies;
she must use kid gloves no matter how horrendously her enemies wage war
against her. It even warps her ability for self-defense. Terrorists wrap
themselves in rusty nails, jagged pieces of metal, and rat poison in an
attempt to maim and kill as many as possible? It's an acceptable tactic
of oppressed people, now validated by a UN Human Rights Commission statement--to
use "all available means" to fight oppression. Yet Israel must
try to disarm 14-year-old boys carrying pipe bombs, rather than shoot
them because, after all--she's better than that. Israel puts her soldiers
at risk rather than Palestinian civilians, even though the "civilians"
in Jenin helped orchestrate the trap that slaughtered 13 Israel soldiers.
Because she's better than they, you see, and yet the world seems to think
the deaths of Jews are somehow less important than the deaths of those
who are trying to kill them. Actually, that's rather an old principle,
one that Jews are used to hearing. We now have an answer to the dilemma;
let's move on.

just enough to bring you down.The Jews are bringing it on themselves. It's our fault, you see. If
only we weren't so--well, Jewish--people wouldn't want to murder us for
being--Jews. No, wait, wait--it's the persecution complex, don't you see?
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy! Jews are afraid they're being persecuted,
and so they are persecuted, thus causing their own persecution! Why, it's
brilliant! This completely absolves the world of any blame
at all for its actions against the Jews! It answers the question as to
why Jews have been persecuted over the centuries, by every people extant
with the exception of Native Americans and Australian aborigines and the
Fiji Islanders. It's because we were expecting it to happen, and
so it happened! Puzzle solved, there's no other explanation for centuries
of persecution, this'll do, let's have a drink, shall we?

On the day after the war, we will make peace with ourselves 
not instead of peace with the Middle East but as a precondition to it.
We will try to determine a common negotiating strategy with our Arab
neighbors, and those on the left and the right who have higher priorities
than national consensus will find themselves irrelevant.

On the day after the war, or perhaps the day after that, we will turn
to the Middle East and try again.
...
Finally, we will turn to the Arab nations and  without illusions
or apologies  offer fair compromise, without surrender. We will
acknowledge that we wronged the Palestinians, but we will demand a reciprocal
acknowledgment that the Arab world has wronged us, too  turning
our homecoming into another form of exile and evoking our hardest face
through their self-righteous intransigence.

An excellent piece
on the current thinking of the American Jewish community from the L.A.
Times. Perhaps they're trying to make up for their perceived anti-Israel
bias?

Also, from the Washington Post, a series called "7 Ways to Think".
I can't find a single-page link, so here are the seven articles. The Halevi
piece is being linked to by many, but there are six other excellent articles
with suggestions for an end to the strife. Let's not overlook any, whether
or not you agree with them (and I disagree with several, particularly
the one about resettling refugees). But they're all interesting, and worth
a look. permalink

_____7 Ways to Think_____

 Israel should enlist JORDAN
in the cause.
 South Africa offers a way to address GRIEVANCES
 Foreign OBSERVERS
would foster civility.
 A way home for Palestinian REFUGEES
 Enlist the MEDIA
to build trust.
 Dismantle a SETTLEMENT
to gain security.
 INTERVENE
when mediation fails.

Proof of Lies

One of the biggest lies of Jenin is that the Israeli soldiers refused
to allow ambulances to get the wounded out. This is untrue; Israeli forces
allowed ambulances in and out upon the condition that they were searched
for explosives and smuggled terrorists; most ambulance drivers refused
to allow the searches.

Meryl K. Evans sent me a video
of one such ambulance search (not in Jenin, however) that yielded an unexpected
bonus: An explosives belt of the kind that was used in the Netanya Passover
Massacre. This is why the IDF refuses unfettered access by Red Crescent
ambulances. And a note: Using medical vehicles for such purposes is against
the Geneva Convention, and thus a war crime. I don't expect the UN Commission
on Human Rights to call for an investigation, however. Do you? permalink

Armageddon was on last night, and I was remembering how silly it was,
and wondering exactly how inaccurate it was as well. Then I found myself
trying to remember the name of that website that deconstructs all of the
silly asteroid movies and their mistakes, as well as the conspiracy theory
loonies who contend that there was no moon landing. And what do I find
over at TNR's Corner but Junk Science,
the site I was looking for. Er, except it wasn't. The site I wanted
is Bad Astronomy. Hey--Phil Plait
quotes Mark Twain on the home page; this man knows his stuff! In fact,
I'm adding it to my links page. His movie
list includes Austin
Powers. Austin Powers? Well, they featured the moon in "The Spy
Who Shagged Me." Fair game. He also takes on Star Trek Enterprise
and the Phantom Menace. And the science in Armageddon? Well. He calls
the page "Armpitageddon".

Here's the short version: "Armageddon" got some astronomy
right. For example, there is an asteroid in the movie, and asteroids
do indeed exist.

Heh. My kinda reviewer. And he liked Deep
Impact, as did I. Well, except for Tea Leoni having to surf the tidal
wave in the end, but hey--you can't have everything. Check out the site,
it's a nice change of pace.

There is something to be said for those studies about pets reducing your
blood pressure. Gracie has taken to lying on the kitchen chair next to
me while I work on my computer, and from time to time, I reach over to
pet her, and she closes her eyes and thrusts out her chin for the under-the-chin
scratch, her second-favorite (the ears are first). And while that's going
on, Tig generally meows for equal time, and flops on the floor to expose
his belly for a rub, purring quite loudly and closing his eyes in contentment,
showing off the fur that's growing in quite nicely since his trip
to the vet. It's a nice break. permalink